Hallelujah! 

But wait. Why are we celebrating?

Like many of us in the applied systems theory field, the Army (and in particular, General McMaster) has recognized that, “some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” So the complexity of the Afghan situation cannot be condensed into bullet points, after all. PowerPoint, a favorite tool of the military to convey vast amounts of information, is under fire because, as General McMaster points out, it takes no account of interconnections and interrelationships among political, economic and ethnic forces.

General McMaster, we the scientists, practitioners and educators in the burgeoning field of applied systems science applaud you with one hand.  We agree with you that problem solving requires a focus on interconnections, rather than on parts in isolation. Indeed, if you look around you’ll see a systems approach is driving the search for solutions for many of the problems we face in the environment, engineering, and in human societies. More and more, we see food, climate, childhood obesity, poverty, energy and other global challenges “systems” issues.

Yet when the interconnections and interrelationships of American military strategy were represented (as they were in this PowerPoint slide shown in Kabul), General McChrystal brushed it off as too complex and therefore not understandable.

What’s a leader to do?  Most leaders are required to drive action. They must clearly state a goal, line up a set of actions, exert pressure, and then reach the goal.  Many leaders would agree that when lining up strategy, bullet points over-simplify and in the end, mislead. Yet complex systems maps are, well, too complex. 

Let’s pause here for a moment to ask the elephant-in-the-room question:  How did we get here? How did we get so bullet point and PowerPoint obsessed?

Of course, that could be the topic of a much longer blog (or book) but here is one, short answer:  We Americans are encouraged to focus on objects rather than relationships.

In his book, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why (2003), cognitive psychologist Richard Nisbett reports on studies conducted by developmental psychologists with American children. American school children and college students tended to group objects (such as a cow, a chicken and grass) by their taxonomic category. Chinese school children and college students, however, grouped objects based on interrelationships. For example, American students would group a cow with a chicken because they were both animals whereas Chinese students would be more likely to put the cow and grass together because the “cow eats the grass”.  Referring to a similar study conducted with American and Japanese children, Nisbett observes:  “American children are learning that the world is mostly a place with objects, Japanese children that the world is mostly about relationships.”

There are many other influences, such as language structure, compartmentalization of disciplines in school, and more.  It’s no wonder our military leaders get antsy when they see a complex systems map.  Most Americans, including our military, industry and government leaders, were not taught to think systemically; we were taught that the best way to understand a subject was to analyze it or break it up into parts.  

Thinking in terms of systems doesn’t have to be hard.  And it doesn’t have to replace bullet pointed lists and the 2×2 matrix.  In many instances, it simply requires a perception shift from, for example, focusing on parts and fragments to tracing interconnections and the often surprising  dynamics created by closed loops of cause and effect.* 

In my classes and talks, I encourage students and audiences to be suspect of information that is presented as discrete (bullet point lists, for instance).  When you see the world in terms of interconnections, networks and systems, you make a perspective shift:

From:  Discrete information   –>    To:  Closed Loops of Cause & Effect

When presented with bullet points, ask questions.  Probe how those elements may be interconnected in closed loops of causality.  Imagine you are in the audience as a presenter concludes his or her presentation with a list of “Next Steps.”  One step is to “train future leaders” in a specific research or problem-solving approach. The next step is to “increase funding for special projects”.  Rather that nodding your head and swallowing the list whole, pause, and ask:  “What will happen if we train more future leaders?  Will that have some impact on the our ability to ‘increase funding for special projects’?” Look beyond the bullet points for multiple causes, effects and unintended or unexpected impacts.

“What?!” you say?  Ask more questions?  There’s no reward in that!  As a general, manager, or any type of leader, I need to know where to exert my effort, my resources and my attention.  

I can offer you this promise:  If  you find ways to work with your team to map either the current or desired reality of a complex issue, using pencil & paper sketches, PowerPoint or computer models, you will:  a) uncover a host of unintended consequences that emerge from the interactions among your decisions, b) discover unforeseen leverage points, and c) make more informed decisions and policy changes that will likely lead to positive results. As a side benefit, you will be more likely to get off that problem solving treadmill, where our “solutions” often only create more problems or make the original problem worse and, as a result of creating causal models as a group, you will experience greater clarity and learning among group members. (By the way, if you don’t do these things, Joseph Campbell has a warning for you:  “People who don’t have a concept of the whole, can do very unfortunate things…”). 

And what about PowerPoint?  Is it such an evil tool? 

In my opinion, the Army missed the point about PowerPoint.  PowerPoint, like any tool, it is only as good as the person using it. You can dumb down complexity by parsing out information into mind-numbing sets of bullet points.  You can also use PowerPoint to represent complex interrelationships and dynamics by using arrows, icons and builds.  The mistake made with the American military map is that too large a serving of spaghetti was put on one plate, instead of showing one noodle (or causal link), and one domain (e.g., tribal governance) at a time. (My assumption here though, is that since the map was created by the highly-skilled PA Consulting Group, the map was presented to the generals one section at a time). 

Whether you’re an educator, business leader, physician, urban planner, engineer, community organizer, or military general, it’s time to be curious about how this is connected to that.  We all need to move beyond laundry list or bullet point thinking to seeing and thinking about patterns of interaction, networks and other lines of inquiry and problem solving that more closely matches the more interdependent, complex world we live in. 

L. Booth Sweeney,  Concord, MA

For another system dynamics perspective from on the New York Times article, see this post from Chris Soderquist. 

Many thanks to Gale Pryor and John Sweeney for their thoughtful commentary on early drafts of this post).  

*What are “closed loops of cause and effect?”:  When we “get” the idea of closed loops (vs. straight lines) of cause and effect, we understand that closed “feedback loops”– circular loops of mutual causality that amplify change — underlie the spread of a rumor, the growth of a virus, or a successful person’s willingness to take on more work.  Reinforcing feedback loops act as engines of growth:  change in a system feeds back to cause even more change in the system. 

We also look for balancing or self-regulating feedback — a set of interactions that return a system (like your body, an ecosystem, market systems) back to a state of equilibrium.  By their very nature, balancing feedback works to bring things to a desired state and keep them there.  When we understand balancing feedback, we stop using our thermostat like a gas pedal, increasing or decreasing the temperature to suit our moment-by-moment needs.  Rather we let the internal feedback structure do its work, allowing the temperature to self-adjust to a desired temperature.

Sounds like a question a college interviewer might ask.  To be literate of course, means you have a good understanding of a particular subject, like a foreign language or mathematics. If you’re reading this, you probably have good English literacy.  For others, science or engineering, or even our woodworking or gardening literacy is particularly strong.

If you listen closely to folks like Thomas Friedman, Michael Pollan, Nicholas Kristof, Wendell Berry and others, you’ll hear them asking for a new kind of literacy, one I call systems literacy. 

This new literacy calls for us to “connect the dots”,  to look at not just the parts but the interrelationships, patterns, and dynamics as well when faced with complex issues, or what Russ Ackoff use to call “wicked messes.”  When we think in terms of systems, we toggle our focus between parts and wholes, between open loops and closed loops (where waste from one source can be “food” for another), between microcosms to macrocosms. We learn to see recurring patterns that exist among a wide variety of living systems and we use our understanding of those patterns to correct actions, anticipate unintended consequences, and produce learning.*  

Why do we need another literacy?  My favorite agrarian poet Wendell Berry says it so well:

“We seem to have been living for a long time on the assumption that we can safely deal with parts, leaving the whole to take care of itself.  But now the news from everywhere is that we have to begin gathering up the scattered pieces, figuring out where they belong, and putting them back together. For the parts can be reconciled to one another only within the pattern of the whole thing to which they belong.” (from The Way of Ignorance, pg. 77)

Most Americans, including our industry and government leaders, were taught that the best way to understand a subject was to analyze it or break it up into parts.   Where were we taught the skills of seeing and understanding systems of complex causes and effect relationships and unintended impacts? 

Yet these are the skills we need to create sustainable communities, and to address pressing issues such as vulnerable food systems, global warming, childhood obesity, unstable energy relationships, environmental degradation and more.

When we are systems literate, we can…

… stop jumping to blame a single cause for the challenges we encounter and instead, look for multiple causes, effects and unintended impacts. 

…move beyond laundry lists and bullet points, to seeing patterns of interaction that more closely match the more interdependent, complex world we live in.

…get off that problem solving treadmill, where our “solutions” often only create more problems or make the original problem worse.  

When we are systems literate, we look at the economy, the climate, education, energy, poverty, waste, disease, sustainable communities as systems issues. We see that nothing stands alone, which means that my climate is your climate, your infectious disease is my infectious disease, your food shortage is my food shortage. 

Where do you start?   Perhaps you pick up a copy of Donella Meadows book “Thinking in Systems” or Peter Senge’s classic The Fifth Discipline, or Fritjof Capra’s The Web of Life or the just released systems education book, Tracing Connections. (For other suggestions, look at the systems literacy resources on my site).

Or you simply try adding the word “system” as you talk about everyday issues, big and small, such as laundry (system), family (system), classroom (system), food (system), waste (system), climate (system), and so on.  By adding the word system, we begin to look for interconnections, closing loops of  material and information flows, anticipating time delays and the inertia created by stocks (or accumulations).

When we think of the laundry as a system, we shift our focus from the pile of laundry to the many interrelated factors influencing that pile:  children, dogs, towels that could be used more than once, etc.  

When we think of farms as living systems, we see the parts and processes of a farm include the farmer, animals, crops, insects, soil, weather and natural cycles, such as the water cycle, as connected to and nested in each other. 

We also see  the farm as part of a larger food production system that includes natural and human resources, waste, food processing, distributors and consumers, and we see the farm’s role in influencing other systems such as health care, energy independence and climate. 

Everyday, I see more opportunities for developing systems literacy.   In the last fifteen years, a growing number of schools in the U.S. and around the world have begun in earnest to teach students systems thinking.  Several State Departments of Education are including systems thinking and “Education for Sustainability” (EFS), or learning that promotes understanding of the interconnectedness of the environment, economy, and society, as a requirement for middle school science standards. The MacArthur Foundation just awarded a major grant for a project focused on developing systems thinking in middle school students and developing new curriculum for teachers across disciplines. 

Just as our nation has improved its math literacy and science literacy, the time has come for us all to support efforts to develop systems literacy.

*Scientists and educators in the burgeoning field of systems science describe a living system as patterns of interrelationships among parts that continually affect one another over time. Increasingly, a systems approach is driving the search for solutions for the problems we face in the environment, engineering, and in human societies.  Systems literacy combines conceptual knowledge (knowledge of system properties and behaviors) and reasoning skills (the ability to locate situations in wider contexts, see multiple levels of perspective within a system, trace complex interrelationships, look for endogenous or “within system” influences, be aware of changing behavior over time, and recognize recurring patterns that exist within a wide variety of systems. See here for more on the principles and habits of mind related to systems literacy.

Back in February 2009,  I launched the Friedman Project.  As part of that project I promised to walk you through the systems discussed by New York Times journalist, Thomas Friedman in his articles and books.  

The intent of the Friedman Project is to leverage Friedman’s natural tendency to talk in “systems” by making the systems he talks about — climate, energy, food, etc. — visible.  So far I’ve done this with the help of causal loop diagrams and cartoons. 

I’m very pleased to announce that Chris Soderquist and I have created our first Friedman Project netsim.  This netsim allows you to explore the system dynamics inherent in a recent New York Times article  by Tom Friedman entitled “Win Win Win Win Win.” 

There are more netsims to come.  Check this one out.  And let us know what you think.

 Are you finding it easier to “see systems”?  Are you making systems — rather than fragments — the context for our own learning, problem solving or design efforts?  

If the answer is “yes,” then we’re on the right track.  If not, we’ll keep working at it.

I returned from Hungary last night and I can’t sleep. 

 I spent the most extraordinary week with the Balaton Group and my mind is like a sour dough starter that has just been fed:  bubbling, expanding and overflowing.  

During the week, I was immersed in a host of new sustainability ideas in social science, politics, education, and economics.  There was  Tim Jackson’s proposal for a new type of economics that brings “prosperity without growth, a community biogas project in Indonesia run by Any Sulistyowati that uses a biodigester to turn cow manure into biogas (energy for cooking and organic fertilizer), thus transforming the energy equation for rural people in Indonesia, and Emelia Arthur, the young, vibrant newly elected “mayor” or  District Chief Executive of the Shama District,  who by demanding bribe-free, sustainable development, is creating ripple effects far beyond her region in Ghana.  

There is of course, much more to tell about this meeting, but it is a story about my flight home that I most want to share with you.  

I flew home on Lufthansa via Munich.  As I settled in for the seven-hour second leg, the person in front of me did what most people eventually do:  she pushed her seat back.  I, in turn, reclined my seat so to have more space to work on my laptop.  This simple act sent the person behind me into a tizzy!

She began bumping and pushing and pulling on my seat.  I was on such a high from the meeting in Hungary that somehow I convinced myself that she was just getting herself “settled in.”  After an hour or so, the bumping and thumping continued. It was clear she wanted my seat out of her “space”, ASAP!  

It did cross my mind to just “give in” and put my seat back fully upright,  but honestly, I was so cramped by the seat in front of me,  it just wasn’t a reasonable option.  As the tension in my own body began to rise, I thought to myself, there has to be some lesson here!  

And then it dawned on me:  when we are living in systems, it is often challenging to see more than your part of the system.  So, we make decisions and take actions that make sense for our part, not necessarily understanding or inquiring into the impact on the other parts, or on the whole.  

It did occur to me to turn around and try to talk this through with my fellow passenger but I lost courage.  Why?   She seemed to be speaking only in German and I was sure my two years of college German wouldn’t carry me through the conversation.  

I also knew  it would be a difficult conversation.  Perhaps I should talk to my friend Sheila Heen, co-author of the book, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, about partnering on a new book:  How  to have the difficult conversations that emerge when we attempt to reconnect the parts to the whole.

The bumping, thumping passenger behind me had actually given me a gift:  an insight about why it can be so difficult to think about systems. As soon as that insight showed up, I relaxed.  Eventually, I put my seat half way up.  

And the thumping stopped.

In a recent New York Times Op-Ed,  Thomas Friedman argues that the second most important rule to energy innovation is “a systemic approach.”  

In this article, Friedman talks us through a recurring “play,” in which gas prices, consumer demand full-efficient cars and “petro-dictators” all play a part.  According to Friedman, the play goes like this: 

“Which play? The one where gasoline prices go up, pressure rises for more fuel-efficient cars, then gasoline prices fall and the pressure for low-mileage vehicles vanishes, consumers stop buying those cars, the oil producers celebrate, we remain addicted to oil and prices gradually go up again, petro-dictators get rich, we lose. I’ve already seen this play three times in my life.  Trust me: It always ends the same way — badly.”

OK.  So, let’s look at the system (or set of interrelationships) behind the “Win, Win, Win…” play.  Friedman identifies several interconnected elements:

Gas prices (go up and down)  

Pressure for more fuel-efficient vehicles (goes up or down)

Here is a very simple map of the system: 

If we walk around the loop, it reads like this: 

As gas prices go up, pressure to increase fuel efficiency goes up.*   In the short term, the reduced demand on gasoline, means more supply and eventually gas prices fall. 

What happens to the demand for more fuel-efficient cars when prices fall?

It falls off.  And for those who may have been driving less, start to drive more.  Why?  The pressure’s off. 

Where else have you seen this kind of pattern? 

It reminds me of the ups and downs of dieting and exercise.  You exercise and loose weight.  Great.  End of story, right?  Well, not usually. Often, when we lose the weight, the pressure’s off, so we ease up a bit.  And over time,  we gain the weight back and we start to diet again. 

If we go back to our occasional gasoline “diet”, there’s more to the story. Our dependency on the symptomatic solution, in this case, foreign oil, keeps us in a state of addiction, and so, less focused on more fundamental solutions, one of which is getting off foreign oil and onto clean energy alternatives.  If we look at this pattern through the lens of a system archetype called “shifting the burden” it might look like this: 

Here’s the rub:  The upper loop (the short-term solution) works, in the short term. It’s insidious though. Because it works, it takes us away from more fundamental solutions. A classic example of a shifting the burden archetype is alcohol and drug use.  Feeling stressed?  Have a glass of wine.  Or two.  Over time however, this response to stress can have unanticipated side effect, such as greater fatigue, poor health, and addiction.  The burden for solving the problem or making the pain go away is shifted onto the upper loop.  

What might be a longer-term, more fundamental solution to stress?  For some, it may be making an adjustment to workload, or getting more sleep. For others, it might mean increasing how much they exercise or reconnecting with friends.

So what can we do?  Perhaps one step is to remember what long-term solutions look like.  Look at older people in China practicing Qigong in the parks, day in and day out.  That’s a long-term, mind-body health solution.  Hiring in outside consultants can be a short-term solution.  Developing skills and leadership capacity in existing staff is a long-term solution.  

So what else can we do?  Another simple step is to start paying attention to the recurring patterns, or the “plays” as Friedman calls them.  If we’re able to see shifting the burden patterns, or a host of other recurring systems patterns around us, for what they are, we’re more likely to be able to step out of the habitual patterns of thought and action associated with them.  When we can do this, we’re more able to work with and eventually change those patterns.   

To explore these dynamics further, check out the Friedman project netsim created by myself and my colleague  Chris Soderquist.

*Prices need to stay up a while for this pressure to have a significant and lasting impact.  

– Thank you to Dave Smyth for creating these wonderful  illustrations.

This seems like a bunch of far-out ideas, right? 

(picture credit) 

Not according to George Lakoff , professor of cognitive linguistics at U.C. Berkeley.  In The Obama Code, Lakoff describes seven “crucial intellectual moves” that are behind Obama’s code of conduct.  One of these seven moves (number six on the list) is Obama’s understanding of “systemic causation” versus “direct causation.” 

 Now, if you’re not a linguist, what does systemic causation mean, and how is it different than direct causation?

Let’s look at the difference by looking at the story of Laurie (hang in here with me, we’ll get back to Obama): 

Laurie was in trouble. Her new consulting job was great for the first few months but now projects were piling up. She was missing deadlines, her e-mail box was full and every voice mail was marked “urgent.”   At home, she found herself distracted and testy, snapping at the kids for no particular reason.

At a lunch meeting one day, while her colleagues engaged in a staccato thumb war on their PDA’s, Laurie waited impatiently for her laptop to boot up.  The next week, she found herself wandering the halls, wasting precious time and unable to find her colleagues for the weekly lunch meeting.  She found out later that the meeting had been moved; everyone else had picked up the message on their PDAs.   When her boss teased her about joining the 21^st century, she decided something had to change, and fast.

That evening, she got on-line and bought the fastest PDA she could find.  Within 24 hours, she had it loaded up with all of her contact information and “to do” lists.  Now, when she wanted to contact a client or send a document, she could do it all from one pocket-sized machine.

For a few months, Laurie felt like she was getting on top of her work. She found herself firing off e-mails at all times of day and in all kinds of locations:  at the breakfast table, at soccer games, in the grocery store, even while her kids were taking a bath. It became a game to see how quickly she could respond to clients’ requests.  Laurie was hooked.

As her response time began to improve, her clients settled down and her anxiety began to wane.  As the pressure decreased and her productivity went up, she did what most people would do: she began to take on more work.  After a few months, Laurie started to notice she was drinking more coffee to keep up the pace, and that anxious feeling started to creep in again. As she took on more work, the pressure increased and her ability to get it all done, even with the PDA, began to decrease.  In the end, she was more tired and more anxious than she was before she purchased the PDA. 

What happened?  Laurie did what most of us would do when faced with a problem:  she found a way to make the problem go away.  Let’s take a look at the way Laurie “solved” her problem: 

        PROBLEM (Lack of productivity) —> SOLUTION (Time-saving device).

Laurie solved her problem by finding a clear and definite way out, taking a straight line from the problem to the solution. A solves B, end of story.  This is what Lakoff calls direct causation. After implementing “the solution” Laurie thinks she solved the problem, yet her solution only makes the original problem worse.

How did Laurie get into this position?  Just like Laurie, most of us have been conditioned to think in terms of straight lines.  A fire breaks out in the neighborhood, quick, call the fire department.  A teacher is out sick, call in a substitute.  Step on a rusty nail, call the doctor and get a tetnus shot. The school roof is leaking, fix it. The market is down – sell (or buy).  In these situations, we react, in the moment, to a problem that is well-defined. We go back to these straight line – A —> B – solutions because the problem usually goes away.   

Yet many of the challenges we encounter are not made up of simple straight lines but patterns of interaction that better resemble loops, webs and networks.  What’s more, many of life’s challenges are dynamic, changing over time, not static, single events we can address individually. Many people learn this when they become parents or managers. A congratulatory pat on the back to one child can send a sibling into a green-eyed tizzy. As a manager, you learn that a golf outing billed as a team building day becomes a “wicked mess” when members of your team don’t play golf. Rather than straight lines, these messy real-life challenges are more like systems. They’re made up of elements that interact and affect one another, often in ways we cannot see.

This is what Lakoff calls systemic causation. Understanding systemic causation means we see causality in terms of interrelationships, rather than fragments, and multiple causes and effects rather than isolated events.  If Laurie were to look at her situation as a system, it might be drawn like this:

Now, of course, you don’t have to draw these systems maps when every time you find your self smack in the middle of what Russell Ackoff calls a “wicked mess”, but sometimes, it can really help. 

When you make the system visible, you can then think more objectively about what link to break, or what additional loop you might add.  For instance, looking at the above map, Laurie might see that the leverage lies in monitoring what she deems as “an acceptable workload.”  Just because she can take on more work, doesn’t mean she should. 

Laurie may also review her goals, however implicit they may be. She may decide her goal is to be successful and to have a happy, low-stress home life and so may find it acceptable not to take on additional client work.  If her goal is to be the top consultant in the firm, and maintaining a steady workload is not an option, she may choose another systemic strategy.  She may add a loop, in this case, a balancing loop.  In Laurie’s case, she might add a “relaxation” loop, to manage or lower the stress she feels from an increased workload.  In this balancing loop, as Laurie’s anxiety goes up, she manages it with some activity, such as meditation, yoga or walking.

Back to Obama:  the bottom line here is that by taking a systemic view —  of climate change, of our schools, of the economy, of global conflicts – Obama is more likely to get our nation off the problem solving treadmill, where one “solution” only leads to a new problem, and onto more sustainable, more integrated strategies for change.  

It’s bitter cold here in the Northeast.   My kids seem to have the gloves-boots-hat set permanently attached to their bodies.  I haven’t received mail for days:  our mailman just isn’t into climbing the snow mound that blocks our mailbox.   And yet, I can’t seem to quell this rumble of excitement, this surge of anticipation.  Christmas is over. So what is it? 

It’s hope.   I’m feeling hopeful, even with these seemingly endless days of ice and snow.  President Obama gives me hope.  And someone else does too: Thomas Friedman. 

If you don’t know him, Thomas Friedman is the foreign affairs and occasional op-ed columnist for the New York Times.  (If I could, I’d promote him to “Our World Affairs” columnist).

I became a fan of his writing early on when I realized he writes from a systems perspective. What does that mean?  You’ll rarely find Friedman focused on just a part or a fragment.  To Friedman, nothing stands in isolation.  Instead, he writes about systems – interrelated parts and processes that continually affect each other over time.  And he sees systems patterns everywhere — in escalating gas prices, in financial markets, in the dynamics related to female literacy, in wildlife management – and he wants his reader to understand these systems as well. Recently, Friedman has taken it up a notch, and has started to urge us all to take a more “systemic approach.”   (see Hot, Flat & Crowded, p. 199).  To this I say, Hallelujah! 

Like Friedman, I want people to understand these systems, and I want them to see systems too.

Why? Most Americans, including our industry and government leaders, haven’t been taught to see systems.  In school, I was taught that the best way to understand a subject was to analyze it or break it up into parts.  It wasn’t until I took courses as an adult that I really learned to see systems of multiple causes, effects and unintended impacts.

Yet these are the skills we need to navigate interdependent financial systems, complex energy relationships and issues of global impact such as climate change.  Without these skills, we continue to operate from crisis to crisis, stuck on the problem solving treadmill, where our “solutions” often only create more problems or make the original problem worse.  

For years, I’ve been filling up my “Friedman File” with clippings of his articles and my own attempts to create pictures, simple causal maps, of the systems he writes about.   Now my Friedman file is overflowing.  Since my work is about helping people of all ages to use their own natural systems intelligence in everyday decision making (and to develop systems literacy*), I decided to launch the “The Friedman Project.”  

In each “Friedman Project’ entry, I’ll walk you through the system or systems Friedman is discussing, using simple causal maps.  (Click here to see how I’ve done this for educators with children’s books). In this way, we can all build our systems muscles, and more readily recognize systems in different settings. I hope this thread also helps you to make systems — rather than fragments — the context for your own learning, problem solving and design efforts.

I’ll post the first Friedman Project this week. Let me know what you think. 

Suzy Systems (AKA L. Booth Sweeney) 

* To be literate means you have a good understanding of a particular subject, like a foreign language or mathematics. In this case, the subject is (living) systems.

Everyone knows how a bathtub works, right?  If water flows into the tub faster than it flows out, what happens to the amount of water in the tub?   If you said the water level rises, you’re right.  And if the water flows out of the tub faster than it flows in, what happens?  

(Right again. The water level lowers).  

Now you know how to think like a bathtub.  

So let’s see how you would you answer this question (posed today by New York Times science writer, Andrew Revkin):  

         “When is the atmosphere like a bathtub?”  

If you’re thinking that the atmosphere accumulates carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases the way a bathtub accumulates water, you are right once more.  Most climatologists agree that humans are putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at almost twice the rate that natural processes (such as oceans and other carbon sinks) can remove them.

For a fuller explanation of these bathtub dynamics, see Revkin’s blog, Dot Earth, or the Sterman & Booth Sweeney article,  ”Cloudy Skies:  Assessing Public Understanding of Global Warming.  (By the way, if you don’t know the work of MIT professor John Sterman, you should! If you watch the video of Sterman on the Revkin post, go to minute 18 for the best part).

Here’s the rub:  how well do we understand accumulations and flows, also known as stocks and flows? Not well according to some research studies.   This isn’t surprising really.   If you think about it, where did you learn to think about stocks and flows?  

You may not have learned about stocks and flows in school, but anyone who has taken a bath, has opened a bank account or has clutter in their home, intuitively understands stock-flow structures.  You can imagine your bank account balance as a kind of bathtub—the money in it just keeps getting higher and higher (as long as you don’t make any withdrawals, of course!). So, the balance is something that accumulates. On the other hand, the paying of interest on the account is more like a faucet that flows faster the higher your balance gets.  Systems dynamicists would describe your account balance as a stock and your interest payments as a flow. Each of them influences the other.  Essentially, an amount of something—trees, fish, people, goods, clutter—is a stock. The rate at which a stock changes, going up or down, is its flow. 

At this point, you may be muttering to yourself, SO WHAT?!  Why do I need to know about stocks and flows?

Stocks and flows create many of the most perplexing dynamics we encounter because stocks tend to accumulate, and we often don’t see that accumulation.  Studies of the pesticide DDT, for example, have shown while DDT evaporates from the surface of plants and buildings over six months, it remains in the tissue of fish for up to 50 years.  The amount of DDT in fish tissue is a stock with very slow outflow.  

When we understand stocks and flows, we understand that a deficit (the rate at which a country borrows money) is a flow and the national debt is a stock.  We understand, as well, that taking the national deficit down to zero doesn’t mean we get rid of the debt.  We also understand that proposals to “slow the rate of growth of carbon dioxide emissions” will continue to increase the stock of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, if the rate at which carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere continues to be greater than the rate at which it is draining out.  

And a big one for me, we understand that we can address clutter (a stock) by turning down the inflow (the rate at which we buy stuff), or turning up the outflow (the rate at which we recycle, give away/throw away, put stuff on ebay, etc.)  

SEED’s Climate Challenge (includes a terrific simulation, suitable for young people, 10 and up)

 Sterman’s Bathtub Dynamics and Climate Change

Waters Foundation:  Student Lessons involving stock/flow maps

Also, check out Drew Jones, Beth Sawin and the Climate Interactive blog 

I grew up reading about Johnny Appleseed (real name:  John Chapman), the American folk hero who walked across America planting apple trees, handing out small bags of apple seeds along the way.  Last night, I read “The Story of Johnny Appleseed” (Aliki’s version) with my seven-year old son. It was the perfect ending to Halloween madness.  We both paused at this line:  

“On and on Johnny walked, planting as he went. When he needed more seeds, he collected sackfuls from the cider mills.”

When I asked my son what he thought of Johnny taking seeds from the cider mill, he said “that’s cool … ‘cuz they probably would have just ended up in the trash!”.  

I poked around this morning and found out that Johnny wasn’t just handed the seeds from the mills.  He had to separate the seeds from the apple pulp, wash and dry them, then put them in small sacks.

Long before the principle of “waste equals food” was so compellingly described by McDonough and Braungart in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, Johnny Appleseed was living the idea.  

So what can we learn from Johnny?  If we want to live sustainably – within the means of nature – we’d be smart to look for opportunities where the waste of one, can become the food for another.  In this way, we do as nature does, allowing all materials  to continuously circulate in closed loops of production, use and recycling.

Most of our products, however, are created using a linear manufacturing process, e.g., take -> make ->  waste.    We take raw materials, such as copper, iron, and minerals from the Earth.  We make goods, for example, cars, refrigerators, and computers. And then, because most of these products end up in the dump, where they cannot be put to use by anything or anybody, we waste.  (Check out “The Story of Stuff” for more on this). 

We don’t have to create unusable waste.  If we imitate living systems, waste from one system can become food for another. Old tires can be become shoes, plastic bottles can turn into fleece jackets, the remains of coffee plants can be used to grow mushrooms*, and paper can become kitty litter or animal bedding. 

So how can we close the loop?   If you compost food wastes at home, you’re already doing it.  Your “waste” is becoming “food” for your garden.

If I think about it, I learned early on about the idea of “waste = food” from my parents. As a little girl, I tagged along on trips to the garage sales and flea markets.  To them, one person’s junk was another person’s treasure.

*See the ZERI site for a terrific case study.